I have invented a new apparatus, machine, and method for the heating of fluids via microwave frequencies induced into the material to be heated. The process began by trying to invent a better water distiller and purification system than the current one I am using at home. The unit I currently utilize for home has electrodes in a boiling chamber and the electrodes corrode because of the impurities in the water that supplies the house. This started me thinking how I might create a unit that would not have components that corrode because of the corrosive action of water in contact with metallic parts. To attempt a cure for this problem with the current home unit that is now being used I have installed several water conditioning units in front of it, including carbon filters and reverse osmosis filters. However this water is more “aggressive” and the units' electrodes seem to break down more rapidly and had more failures. The water purification process of the machine with electrodes heating the water is comparatively slow with the machine taking 24 hours or more to make 8 gallons of water and power intensive. The distilled water made is used mainly for drinking and cooking, as the replenishment times are prohibitively slow for other high volume usages.
Since I did not want the process to involve corrosion it seemed to me that a new way of boiling or heating water was necessary. I knew that a microwave oven could boil water but after doing the research found out that microwave ovens create “super heated water” and that boiling or steaming water was a problem in a microwave oven. I also did not want to cause microwaves to be injected into a cavity with another container in the cavity, as this seems to be a waste of power and efficiency because of the difference in the cavity geometries. This method has been utilized in U.S. Pat. No. 6,015,968 Armstrong, U.S. Pat. No. 5,711,857 Armstrong, U.S. Pat. No. 5,286,939 Martin, U.S. Pat. No. 4,694,133 Le Viet, and other patents mentioned in my patents examined further in this document. I then had the idea of building the antenna into the middle of the cavity, which held the fluid to be heated with the cavity being the wave-guide. The concept of having a remote antenna inserted into a vessel is mentioned in U.S. Pat. No. 6,175,104 Greene et al. The problem with the '104 patent is that the antenna, or emitting device, is in direct contact with the fluid to be heated. As a result of using a material that was transparent to the microwaves I could design and build a device that can have an antenna physically isolated from the cavity for water heating, be in the middle of it, and cause the fluid to be heated without any direct contact by using the cavity as a wave guide/resonance chamber. This also causes the material or fluid surrounding the cavity into which the antenna or microwave emitting device is located to be evenly irradiated by the microwaves.
Others have proposed building microwave fluid heaters with their design entailing the conventional use of a microwave generator device located off to one side of the cavity or built into the side of the cavity, as in U.S. Pat. No. DES 293,128 Karamian, U.S. Pat. No. DES 293,368 Karamian, U.S. Pat. No. 6,015,968 Armstrong, U.S. Pat. No. 4,671,951 Masse, U.S. Pat. No. 4,671,952 Masse, U.S. Pat. No. 4,694,133 Le Viet, U.S. Pat. No. 4,778,969 Le Viet, U.S. Pat. No. 4,417,116 Black, U.S. Pat. No. 5,387,780 Riley. They typically use wave-guides to direct the microwaves from the source into the cavity containing the water or fluid to be heated or steamed. This invention uses the direct output from the microwave source or antenna to heat the fluid.
Another problem with heating water in a microwave is the super heated water problem. That is, water will heat to over the boiling temperature of water at sea level of 100° C. without boiling, or going into steam. As pointed out in the article Ask a Scientist Chemistry Archive, SuperHeated Water, by the USA Department of Energy, obtained from the internet, water heated in a microwave in a cup will superheat the water, but will not cause it to steam. A boiling point must be established for other water molecules to boil. From the above article “Boiling begins at a temperature when the vapor pressure of a liquid equals the ambient atmospheric pressure that is above the pool of liquid. However, you WILL NOT have boiling water if there are no sites for the vapor (within the liquid) to nucleate (grow) from.
Good nucleating sites are scratches, irregularities and other imperfections inside the cup, mug, or in your case the Pyrex.” Thus, when a fork is put into a cup, the super heated water then explosively boils and steams vigorously. This is also a problem with very smooth glass, such as a pyrex bowl, and presents a technical barrier to be solved in the invention that I have outlined using a pyrex boiling/wave guide chamber. One solution is to make the pyrex chamber side walls uneven and rough, while another solution is causing the fluid or matter in the chamber to be stirred by an internal force, such as a fan, or an external stimulation, such as an ultrasonic transducer or even low frequency waves, or a device that rotates when the electric field is applied due to EMF forces. This is a problem when trying to heat a fluid to a boiling point and above to produce vapor or steam. It further helps the thermal distribution through out the mixture by causing a stirring of the mixture that will even out the heating throughout the fluid or material being heated.